Emotional reasoning: when emotions cloud thinking

Our thinking is not purely analytical and rational, as some people believe.

On a daily basis, emotions are part of our behavioral repertoire, they guide us in our permanent search for satisfaction and well-beingThey help us to avoid the harm and discomfort that can threaten our physical and psychological health.

However, such important benefits come with some side effects.. There are times when emotions can play tricks on us, even when we are mentally healthy.

A typical example of the latter is what is known in the field of psychology as emotional reasoning.

What is emotional reasoning?

Emotional reasoning involves, as the name implies, reasoning according to how you feel, reasoning according to how one feels.

Let's imagine that we have done poorly on a math test, or that we have been fired from our job. In such circumstances, we are likely to "feel" that we have failed, so if that is what we "feel", then it must be because we are indeed "failures". When we fall into the trap of emotional reasoning, we come to seemingly true conclusions but without following a sequence of logical reasoning, but paying attention only to how I feel.

Then, an excessive generalization is made from an anecdotal or very specific fact.. The fact that we have done badly in a math test does not necessarily indicate that we have failed in life. And this is something we constantly do; we draw hasty and usually sharp conclusions without any valid and objective evidence to justify them.

In the same sense, if we feel lonely, we may come to think that we deserve it, that we are not worthy of being loved, or that we have some defect that pushes people away. From there, to believing that we are going to be alone for life, there is a step.

Emotional reasoning focused outward

Emotional reasoning has another aspect focused outward. We also tend to judge the behaviors or emotional states of others according to how we feel at that moment. at the time.

If we are angry because a superior denies us a raise, we are much more likely to attribute malice to the neighbor next door who is listening to loud rock music, or to take as a personal grievance the reckless maneuvers of the driver of the car in front of us on the freeway.

When we feel angry, we see anger in others, and we are unable to realize that it is really us who are angry and we project our emotions onto others.

Emotions are useful

All this should not lead us to think that emotions per se are harmful to us. I like to think of the set of human emotions as a primitive system of intra- and interpersonal communication.. This may sound overly sophisticated, but it is actually quite simple.

Let's take it step by step, word by word.

I say primitive system because emotions, as we know them, within the framework of the evolution of the human species, predate language by a long way.. When we were little more than primates living in the treetops, jumping from branch to branch and completely incapable of articulating any sound remotely resembling what we know today as human speech, we were already able to express a Wide range of emotions.

The "emotional communication system".

And this brings us to the second concept: communication system. When someone smiles at us and his face lights up when he sees us, he is telling us, before he utters a word, that he is pleased by our presence. Or that he likes us in some way, or that we have no reason to fear him, since he has no hostile intentions towards us. These interpretations are valid, of course, depending on the context.

If, at the other extreme, someone glares at us, purses his nose, lifts his upper lip and exposes his teeth, he is letting us know, without verbal expression, that he despises us, detests us, or for some reason feels sufficiently motivated to harm us. In fact, our evolutionary companions, the apes, display fangs as a form of threat to others. Wielding the attack arsenal is often an effective intimidatory elementor a way to dissuade the other from his intention to attack us.

That is why it is possible to affirm that the main function of emotions is to communicate states, attitudes, and behavioral predispositionsboth to ourselves and to others.

Emotions and how we manifest them

We don't need our partner to tell us whether or not he liked the anniversary gift we bought him; before he utters a word we already know by the look on his face. In the same way, we know if our boss is going to give us a raise or fire us when he sends for us to talk privately and we enter his office.

When we see someone with a sad face, without asking them anything, we are certain that they are going through a bad time, that there is something that is making them suffer. That awakens our interest, our compassion.... His emotion acts as an enabler that pushes us to act, to do something to help him..

Cooperation among human beings in the face of adversity, or in pursuit of a common goal, is one of the main components that allowed our evolution and progress as a species.

The primitive and interpersonal character of emotions does not occur only at the phylogenetic level (Darwinian evolution from one species to another), but also at the ontogenetic level, that is, during the individual development of the person. To see this, one only has to observe how a baby behaves before the first year of life, before it can articulate single words.

From birth itself, the different cries of the baby communicate to the adult that he is hungry, colicky or colicky.that he is colicky, or that he is upset because he wants his diapers changed. Every mother, more or less skilled at decoding emotions, learns to recognize the subtle nuances of her child's cries and what they indicate during the first months of life.

Some modest conclusions

Emotional reasoning is a mental scam, a deception, an illusion. created by a demonic magician who appears as a result of a certain difficulty in interpreting and managing one's emotions correctly, and who, hidden in anonymity, can completely direct the life of the affected person, making him/her believe things that are not true, such as that he/she is worthless as a person, that the world is a dangerous place, and even that there is no hope that he/she can get out of this state.

In other words, emotional reasoning generates illusions based on emotion..

But emotions, in themselves, are neither harmful nor an error of nature. In general lines, all of them, those that are pleasant and especially the unpleasant ones, are very beneficial for the human being, are very beneficial for human beings, since they play a fundamental role in the survival of our species.. They help us to build relationships, strengthen bonds and keep us away from dangers.